URAL  TRAINING 

OF  THE 

ICHOOL  CHILD 


.  MARTIN 


MORAL   TRAINING 
OF  THE  SCHOOL   CHILD 


MORAL  TRAINING 

OF  THE 

SCHOOL  CHILD 


BY 

F.  G.  MARTIN 

ALTADENA,  CALIF. 


RICHARD   G.   BADGER 


BOSTON 


Copyright,  1913,  by  Richard  G.  Badger 
All  Rights  Reserved 


THE  GORHAM  PRESS,  BOSTON,  U.  S.  A. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFACE -7 

\ 

I 

NEED    OF    MORAL    TRAINING    IN    THE    PUBLIC 

SCHOOLS 13 

Public  Schools  Only  Nursery  of  Millions  .      .  18 

Its  Economic  Phase 20 

Its  Civic   Phase 23 

Primary  Object  of  Education 25 

Public  School  a  Democracy 26 

Inherent  Worth  of  a  Human  Soul   ....  28 

II 

SCOPE  AND  METHODS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING     .      .  32 

Virile  Moral  Teaching 35 

Elemental  Moral  Training 38 

Teach   Personal   Responsibility 40 

Practical  Moral  Teaching 42 

Teach  Moral  Courage 43. 

Sources  of  Moral  Instruction 47 

Schools  Civic  Barracks 49 

III 

QUALIFICATIONS   FOR   TEACHING    MORALS     .      .  50 
Teacher's  Character  and  Personality     .      .      .52 

IV 

BENEFITS   OF   MORAL   TRAINING — GENERAL   RE- 
MARKS    55 

333869 


PREFACE 

PUBLIC  schools  have  been  a  potential  factor 
in  the  marvelous  development  of  the  United 
States.  Their  influence  has  flowed  in  every  vein 
and  artery  of  life  in  every  generation  since  the 
Mayflower  band  put  foot  on  Plymouth  Rock.  In 
these  humble,  homely  halls  of  learning  have  ma- 
triculated men  and  women  who  have  received 
inspiration  and  have  gone  forth  into  the  greater 
school  of  life  to  make  the  name  American  illus- 
trious by  their  history-emblazoned  deeds. 

The  vestal  fires  of  intelligence,  progress  and 
free  institutions  are  perpetually  burning  in  the 
thousands  of  public  temples  of  learning  dotting 
the  hills  and  valleys  and  sentineling  the  crowded 
thoroughfares  of  the  land.  To  perpetuate  and 
preserve  inviolate  these  educational  fires  is  the 
fervid  purpose  of  every  true  American. 

Because  of  the  tremendous  potentiality  for  good 
or  evil  inherent  in  the  public  schools  they  demand 
jealous  guarding  against  harmful  tendencies  as 
well  as  sedulous  cultivation  and  expansion  and 
betterment. 

From  the  standpoint  of  mental  and  physical 


8    ;  PREFACE 

development  the  public  school  system  of  all  the 
States  has  made  marked  improvement.  Courses 
of  study  and  text-books  have  been  made  to  fit  the 
evolutionary  needs  of  the  developing  child  mind. 
Methods  of  teaching  have  been  modernized. 
Physiological,  psychological  and  scientific  facts 
and  principles  are  more  generally  respected  in  the 
mental  and  physical  training  of  the  child. 

But  while  the  public  schools  are  sending  out 
pupils  better  trained  mentally  and  better  equipped 
physically  than  ever  before,  the  third  and  equally 
important  side  of  triangular  child  nature  is  left 
deplorably  ill-developed  or,  worse  still,  fallow, 
stunted  and  wholly  undeveloped.  There  is  cry- 
ing need  of  moral  training  in  the  public  schools. 
Its  need  is  so  obvious  to  observant  persons  who 
come  into  contact  with  humanity  in  mixed  masses 
as  to  call  for  little  or  no  argument  in  its  behalf. 

The  portentous  fact  that  crime  and  incorrigi- 
bility  and  flagrant  moral  turpitude  increase  despite 
the  increased  facilities  and  greater  efficiency  of  the 
public  school  system  in  itself  argues  something 
fundamentally  awry  or  entirely  lacking  in  the 
training  of  the  children  of  the  land. 

Millions  of  children  are  launched  out  into  the 
world  from  the  public  schools  without  moral  com- 
pass to  guide  them  through  the  uncharted  seas  of 
life.  Thousands  drift  upon  the  rocks  and  shoals 
of  temptation  and  make  moral  shipwreck,  mayhap 


PREFACE  9 

carrying  down  others  with  them  through  their 
vitiating  influence.  Into  the  maelstroms  of  vice 
other  thousands  plunge,  impelled  by  hereditary 
predisposition  or  acquired  moral  taint. 

The  moral  mortality  of  the  country  is  appalling, 
especially  among  its  youth.  It  is  a  cancerous  con- 
dition that  demands  an  heroic  remedy.  No  salve 
or  unguent  or  palliative  will  suffice  to  eradicate  it. 
The  disease  is  deep-seated.  Constitutional  treat- 
ment is  imperative.  Vicious  tendencies  must  be 
torn  up,  root  and  branch,  in  the  child,  if  possible. 
Its  moral  nature  must  be  carefully  cultivated  in  its 
school  days.  Incipient  immoralities  must  be 
pruned  away;  dwarfed  and  stunted  moral  percep- 
tions must  be  nurtured.  The  child  must  serve  an 
apprenticeship  in  morals  and  the  teacher  must  turn 
the  apprentice  over  to  its  parents  and  society  as 
nearly  a  moral  master  as  possible,  with  a  firm 
grasp  upon  its  own  moral  nature  and  with  a  clear 
understanding  of  its  duties  toward  the  world  with 
which  it  must  mingle  and  cope.  This  is  Ameri- 
can childhood's  overshadowing  need  of  the  hour. 

For  the  purposes  of  the  discussion  of  this  vital 
need,  the  subject  will  be  treated  under  four  heads, 
namely:  I.  Need  of  Moral  Training  in  the 
Public  Schools;  II.  Scope  and  Methods  of  Moral 
Training;  III.  Qualifications  for  Teaching 
Morals;  IV.  Benefits  of  Moral  Training  —  Gen- 
eral Remarks. 


MORAL  TRAINING 
OF  THE  SCHOOL   CHILD 


MORAL  TRAINING 
OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD 


NEED  OF   MORAL   TRAINING   IN   THE    PUBLIC 
SCHOOLS 

HON.  ANDREW  D.  WHITE,  former  Am- 
bassador  to  Russia  and  first  president  of 
Cornell  University,  in  a  recent  address,  startled 
the  country  by  a  quasi-endorsement  of  lynching  in 
certain  instances  of  heinous  crime.  Mr.  White 
said: 

"  In  the  next  year  nine  thousand  people  will  be 
murdered  in  this  country.  As  I  stand  here  to-day 
I  tell  you  that  nine  thousand  people  are  doomed 
to  death,  with  all  the  cruelty  of  the  criminal  heart 
and  with  no  regard  for  home  and  family  ties." 

It  was  this  fearful  menace  which  hangs  like  a 
Damoclean  sword  over  the  country  that  moved  this 
eminent  educator  and  conservative  thinker  boldly 
to  assert: 

"Much  may  be  said  in  favor  of  the  quotation  of 
13 


i4  MORAL  TRAINING 

»  •  • 

the  famous  Englishman,  Goldwin  Smith,  '  There 
are  some  communities  in  the  United  States  in 
which  lynch  law  is  better  than  any  other.'  ' 

Census  figures  are  illuminating  on  this  subject 
and  as  startling  as  instructive.  Eighty-five  thou- 
sand persons  accused  of  crimes  or  misdemeanors 
tenant  the  prisons  of  the  United  States  and  nine/ 
thousand  homicides  are  committed  every  twelve- 
month. In  round  numbers,  thirty-five  thousand 
youth  are  in  reform  schools.  And  yet,  turning 
to  the  school  statistics,  it  is  seen  that  seventeen 
and  one-half  million  pupils  are  enrolled  in  the  pub- 
lic schools  of  the  country;  that  the  average  at- 
tendance in  every  political  division  is  higher  than 
ever  before ;  that  there  has  been  a  general  decrease 
in  illiteracy  all  along  the  line,  from  ocean  to  ocean, 
from  the  lakes  to  the  gulf.  Educational  facilities 
were  never  so  general  and  efficient,  attendance  at 
the  public  schools  was  never  so  large,  intelligence 
was  never  so  widely  disseminated,  ignorance  never 
showed  so  low  a  percentage.  Truly  encouraging 
figures  these  so  far  as  they  go. 

But  there  are  more  criminals  now  proportion- 
ately than  ever  before;  capital  crimes  £re  increas- 
ing in  frightful  ratio;  incorrigibility  and  moral 
obliquity  in  children  of  tender  years  is  becoming 
appallingly  prevalent.  In  a  word,  while  illiteracy 
decreases,  crime  increases.  It  is  an  alarming  fact 
that  the  cost  entailed  by  criminality  and  delin- 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  15 

quency  in  the  United  States  is  estimated  as  ex- 
ceeding, by  several  million  dollars,  the  aggregate 
sum  expended  for  all  forms  of  education  in  the 
country,  public  and  private. 

The  logical  conclusion  to  which  the  thinker 
irresistibly  is  driven  is,  either  that  education  is  not 
a  moralizing  force  or  else  that  the  present  meth- 
ods of  instruction  are  woefully  defective  as  touch- 
ing the  moral  side  of  American  youth. 

While  the  statement  cannot  be  substantiated  by 
actual  statistics  and  figures,  yet  it  is  safe  to  assert 
that  a  very  large  percentage  of  the  criminals  and 
criminally  inclined  who  are  not  illiterates  received 
their  only  training  in  the  public  schools.  At  the 
doors  of  the  public  schools,  then,  in  the  main,  must 
be  laid  the  indictment  of  defective  moral  training. 
The  whole  trend  of  educational  discussion  at  con- 
ventions, institutes,  in  teachers'  reading  circles  and 
in  the  educational  publications  indicates  a  recog- 
nized lack  of  morale  in  the  public  schools  and  there 
is  a  perennial  agitation  for  teachers  better  trained 
in  the  psychological  aspects  of  their  work.  That 
phase  of  public  school  training  which  would  em- 
brace moral  teaching  is  admittedly  the  palpably 
weak  phase  of  the  public  sckool  system  in  general. 

Herein  lies  in  a  large  measure  the  source  of 
stagnation  that  feeds  the  cesspools  of  immorality 
and  breeds  crime.  Multitudes  of  children,  with 
moral  natures  untouched,  are  carried  along  in  the 


1 6  MORAL  TRAINING 

school  course  like  so  many  ponies  or  dogs  trained 
mechanically  to  do  certain  things  so  as  to  make  a 
good  showing  when  they  enter  the  world-wide 
hippodrome  of  actual  life,  their  trainers  giving  no 
definite  heed  to  whether  or  not  these  boys  and 
girls  go  out  into  society  to  become  educated  ras- 
cals and  denizens  of  the  underworld,  or  to  be 
useful,  upright  men  and  women.  There  is  a  gen- 
eral lack  of  a  public  school  spirit  of  honor  and 
integrity  which  the  teacher  alone  —  the  "  system," 
so  to  speak  —  can  inaugurate  and  foster.  Masses 
of  children  are  permitted  to  "  just  grow  up,"  not 
primarily  immoral,  but  Topsies,  moral-less,  by 
default  of  moral  instruction. 

This  is  not  generally  true  of  the  higher  insti- 
tutions of  learning.  Much  is  heard  of  "  college 
spirit "  and  it  is  a  blessed  thing  that  such  spirit 
exists.  It  is  a  moral  bulwark  that  saves  many  an 
otherwise  weak  nature.  Along  this  line  President 
Thwing,  of  Western  Reserve  University,  bears 
graphic  testimony  when  he  says : 

"  Statements  emerge  at  various  times  that  the 
heads  of  reform  movements  find  no  small  number 
of  college  graduates  among  the  human  derelicts 
and  wreckage  that  float  to  their  doorways.  That 
there  are  college  men  who  are  bad,  and  who  go  to 
the  bad,  is  not  to  be  denied.  But  the  number  of 
them,  or  the  proportion  of  them,  is  very  much 
less  than  these  interpretations  indicate. 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  17 

"  I  have,  in  common  with  most  college  presi- 
dents, had  a  personal  acquaintance  with  hundreds, 
or  with  thousands  of  college  graduates.  I  have 
known  them  before  they  were  graduates,  and 
cared  much  for  them.  I  have  known  them  after 
they  were  college  graduates,  and  also  cared  much 
for  them.  Their  careers  I  have  followed.  Upon 
the  evidence  thus  given,  I  want  to  bear  testimony 
to  the  effect  that  seldom  is  it  that  a  college  gradu- 
ate goes  to  the  bad,  and  also  seldom  is  it  that  his 
life  or  career  is  inefficient.  Less  than  five  men 
out  of  a  hundred  become  moral  reprobates,  and  I 
think  less  than  ten  per  cent,  lead  useless  careers. 
Ninety-five  men  out  of  every  hundred  are 
reputable  and  ninety  men  out  of  every  hundred 
are  making  some  contribution  of  worth  to  the 
betterment  of  the  community.  . 

"  From  the  University  of  Maine,  on  the  banks 
of  the  Penobscot,  to  the  universities  on  the  Golden 
Gate,  college  men  are,  as  a  body,  clean,  upright 
and  efficient. 

"  There  is  one  cause  which  aids  in  bringing 
about  this  condition  of  integrity  and  success. 
Dissipation  is  usually,  in  certain  stages,  revolting 
to  men  of  good  taste.  Dissipation  is  surrounded 
by,  or  consists  of,  certain  types  of  nastiness. 
College  men  are  supposed  to  be  gentlemen.  They 
embody  the  canons  of  good  taste.  Their  intel- 
lectual character,  even  if  not  their  moral,  develops 


1 8  MORAL  TRAINING 

high  appreciation.  Therefore  most  forms  of  dis- 
sipation are  to  them  repulsive.  The  atmosphere 
and  the  training  of  the  academic  life  are  contra- 
dictory to  the  temptation  of  appetite.  For  doing 
the  duties,  therefore,  which  are  involved  in  up- 
rightness and  in  efficiency,  college  men  are  more 
inclined  than  are  some  other  men." 


Public  Schools  Only  Nursery  of  Millions. 

It  is  no  exaggeration  to  assert  that  the  public 
schools  of  the  country  are  the  only  nursery  that 
millions  of  children  ever  know.  Children  in  mul- 
titudes either  have  no  home  life  or  else  have  that 
which  is  worse  than  no  home  life  —  the  baleful 
influence  of  immoral  or  morally  indifferent  par- 
ents. In  the  congested  tenements  of  the  great 
cities,  amid  the  alien  flotsam  and  jetsam,  which 
has  been  cast  adrift  from  Europe  and  Asia  and 
has  been  beached  on  the  shores  of  America,  this 
appalling  destitution  of  moral  influence  and  senti- 
ment stalks  hand  in  hand  with  material  destitution. 
But  not  alone  to  the  miserable  "  Black  Holes  "  of 
the  great  cities  is  this  dearth  of  moral  influence 
confined.  It  may  be  found  in  the  smaller  urban 
communities  and  even  the  most  favored  rural  dis- 
tricts are  not  strangers  to  moral  as  well  as  material 
squalor.  Every  portion  of  the  land  brings  forth 
its  perennial  crop  of  ignorant,  debased,  dissipated 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  19 

parents  who  foist  upon  society  bevies  of  children 
predisposed  by  vitiated  heredity  to  immorality  and 
crime  and  with  inherited  tendencies  aggravated  by 
daily  example  in  the  home  from  those  to  whom 
they  naturally  look  for  guidance. 

It  is  from  these  cesspools  of  moral  pollution 
that  the  public  schools  receive  streams  of  moral- 
less  childhood  which  imposes  a  tremendous  re- 
sponsibility, because  the  public  school  is  the  only 
possible  morally-purifying  fountain  through  which 
these  streams  of  childhood  will  flow  before  passing 
from  their  morally  arid  homes  out  into  the  de- 
moralizing world  to  fall  more  deeply  into  the 
slime  of  crime  and  vice  if  not  buoyed  by  some 
strong  influence.  The  public  school  is  the  only 
moral  hope  for  vast  numbers  of  such  children. 
The  churches  do  not  and  cannot  reach  them. 
They  are  beyond  the  pale  of  practical  religious 
influence.  Should  home  mission  effort  succeed  in 
reaching  them  it  would  be  only  with  a  rope  of 
sand,  a  beacon  light  that  would  shine  but  a  moment 
and  would  then  be  extinguished  by  the  cruel  blasts 
of  environment,  making  rescue  from  that  source 
well-nigh  hopeless. 

Upon  the  public  schools  chiefly  is  the  problem 
thrust.  It  is  there  these  children  will  receive  the 
only  training  the  mass  of  them  ever  will  get.  No 
other  school  will  they  ever  enter.  Indeed,  it  is 
necessary  that  the  State  should  step  in  and  force 


20  MORAL  TRAINING 

indifferent  parents  to  permit  their  offspring  to 
avail  themselves  of  even  this  comparatively 
meager  source  of  aliment  for  their  higher  natures 
by  compulsory  education  laws. 

The  fact  that  millions  of  children  are  destined 
by  circumstances  never  to  pass  through  educa- 
tional institutions  higher  than  or  other  than  the 
public  school  and  that  the  children  most  vitally  in 
need  of  moral  training  make  up  a  large  portion  of 
this  great  army  of  future  citizens,  is  pregnant  with 
fearful  possibilities  unless  the  public  school  is 
equipped  and  prepared  to  answer  the  Macedonian 
cry  for  moral  aid  from  this  source. 

Its  Economic  Phase. 

From  the  economic  standpoint,  moral  training 
in  the  public  schools  is  a  manifest  necessity.  As 
hereinbefore  observed,  statistics  show  that  crime 
and  incorrigibility  cost  more,  by  millions  of  dol- 
lars, than  does  the  whole  American  system  of  edu- 
cation, public  and  private.  From  the  material 
viewpoint,  therefore,  if  proper  moral  instruction 
and  influence  are  given  in  the  public  schools,  from 
whose  walls  go  out  the  greater  number  of  the 
youth  who  become  incorrigibles  and  later,  crimi- 
nals, the  frightful  saturnalia  of  crime  and  vice 
inevitably  will  decrease  and  with  the  decrease  in 
the  number  of  criminals  will  come  a  corresponding 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  21 

saving  in  the  entailed  cost  of  criminality.  The 
great  sums  expended  for  the  capture,  incarcer- 
ation, conviction  and  maintenance  of  criminals  is 
not  the  only  costly  feature  of  the  prevalence  of 
criminality.  There  is  the  added  positive  public 
burden  of  caring  for  the  worse  than  widowed  and 
orphaned  families  of  the  criminals;  the  widows 
and  orphans  of  the  victims  of  homicides;  and  the 
currents  of  insanity  and  pauperism  which  flow  in 
the  wake  of  crime,  resultant  therefrom. 

Still  another  indirect  and  negative  source  of  loss 
to  the  commonwealth  is  the  fact  that  the  lives  of 
men  and  women,  boys  and  girls,  who,  if  upright, 
industrious  and  law-abiding,  would  be  engaged  in 
some  self-supporting  and  productive  industry,  are 
neutralized  by  crime.  Adding  to  the  adult  prison- 
ers of  the  land  the  youths  in  reformatories,  the 
victims  of  homicides  and  the  persons  thrown  into 
insanity  or  pauperism  as  a  direct  result  of  crime,  ) 
fully  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  individuals 
annually  are  withdrawn  from  the  wage-earning, 
self-supporting  army  of  producers.  This  in  itself 
is  a  startling  item. 

But  there  is  another  economic  phase  more  im- 
portant than  that  pertaining  to  mere  material 
economy.  The  protection  of  society  against  the 
criminal  is  the  problem,  ever  insolvable,  which 
confronts  the  legislatures,  the  intricate  machinery 
of  the  courts,  the  prisons,  the  reformatories  and 


22  MORAL  TRAINING 

all  the  penal  and  reform  institutions  of  the  coun- 
try. There  is  the  startling  presage  that  within 
the  coming  twelvemonth  nine  thousand  human 
souls  will  be  hurled  into  eternity  by  the  bullet  or 
knife  or  bludgeon  of  the  assassin,  and  that  the 
number  will  increase  in  succeeding  twelvemonths 
unless  some  powerful  crime-deterring  influence  is 
set  in  motion.  The  protection  of  life  and  prop- 
erty against  criminal  ravage  is  a  mighty  problem 
and,  let  it  be  repeated,  the  burden  of  relief  must 
fall  upon  the  public  schools  in  providing  the  deter- 
rent, through  moral  training. 

Again,  the  criminal  influence  is  by  no  means  a 
negligible  menace.  Every  crime  is  a  public  peril. 
Every  outbreaking  criminal  deed  sets  in  motion  a 
wave  of  moral  blight  that  sweeps  over  society  with 
its  baneful  influence  —  the  more  atrocious  the 
deed  the  more  baneful  and  blighting  and  the 
wider  sweeps  the  demoralizing  wave.  It  is  known 
that  peculiarly  horrible  crimes  are  quickly  imi- 
tated, oftentimes  in  places  distant  from  the  scene 
of  the  original  atrocity.  Thus  otherwise  harm- 
less natures  often  give  way  under  the  impulse  of 
an  influence  toward  criminality  of  peculiar  enor- 
mity and  not  only  does  the  unhappy  individual 
thus  influenced  suffer,  but  some  member  of  society, 
unscathed  of  such  influence,  it  may  be,  meets  a 
tragic  fate  because  of  it.  Crime  ramifies  in  its 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD          23 

effects  and  influences  and,  directly  or  indirectly, 
deleteriously  affects  every  stratum  of  society. 

Its  Civic  Phase. 

The  need  of  sturdy,  honest,  upright,  fearless 
citizenship  in  the  United  States  was  never  more 
keenly  felt  than  today.  As  never  before  the  weal 
of  the  country  demands 

"  Men  who  their  duties  know, 
But  know  their  rights,  and,  knowing,  dare  maintain." 

The  bad  citizenship  of  the  good  citizen  is  not 
only  generally  recognized  and  deplored  in  this 
country  but  has  become  proverbial  abroad. 
Amid  the  simple  conditions  of  the  New  England 
colonies,  when  population  was  so  sparse  every 
man,  of  his  own  knowledge,  could  take  a  census 
of  his  colony;  when  the  chief  issue  was  the  ele- 
mental one  of  how  to  protect  life  against  the  rude 
blasts  of  nature  and  the  ruder  incursions  of  the 
savage,  the  democracy  which  found  its  expression 
in  the  town  meeting  sufficed  and  citizenship  was 
the  essence  of  simplicity.  But  complex  problems 
and  multifarious  civic  duties  confront  the  Ameri- 
can citizen  of  to-day. 

While  problems  multiply  and  thicken  in  com- 
plexity and  while  civic  duties  much  more  abound 
than  in  the  days  of  simple  pioneer  living  and  a  not 


24  MORAL  TRAINING 

numerous  population,  yet  the  individual  is  as  much 
a  civic  factor  to-day  as  in  the  dawn  of  our  national 
existence.  It  is  a^manifest  truism  that  every  man 
is  a  civic  pcfwer  for  good  or  ill.  There  is  no  neu- 
tral ground.  The  nation  in  any  analysis  is  but  an 
aggregation  of  individual  entities.  And  the 
broadest  statesmanship  and  wisest  publicism  unite 
on  the  simple  yet  all-important  truth  that  the 
perpetuity  of  the  country  and  its  beneficent  insti- 
tutions rests  upon  the  high  general  average  of 
morality  and  intelligence.  Ex-President  Roose- 
velt is  one  of  the  most  consistent  and  persistent 
exponents  of  this  truth  which  he  epitomizes  as 
follows : 

"  We  must  strive  to  bring  about  clean  living  and 
right  thinking.  We  appreciate  that  the  things  of 
the  body  are  important;  but  we  appreciate  also 
that  the  things  of  the  soul  are  immeasurably  more 
important.  The  foundation  stone  of  national  life 
is,  and  ever  must  be,  the  high  individual  character 
of  the  average  citizen." 

Here  unfolds  the  province  of  the  public  school 
—  to  inculcate  the  lessons  that  make  for  good 
citizenship.  The  desideratum  of  good  govern- 
ment will  not  come  from  intelligence  alone  nor 
from  marked  physical  superiority.  A  moralized 
citizenship  is  the  sine  qua  non  of  national  bene- 
faction. Moral  instruction  in  the  public  schools 
must  be  the  leaven  to  leaven  the  whole  lump  of 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  25 

citizenship.  One  of  the  most  inspiring  features 
of  common  school  instruction  should  be  this  privi- 
lege of  giving  to  the  nation  the  corpuscular  ele- 
ment to  enrich  its  very  life  blood.  The  country's 
extremity  with  its  vitiated  blood  of  bad  citizenship 
should  be  seized  upon  as  the  glorious  opportunity 
of  the  public  school. 

Primary  Object  of  Education. 

The  process  of  orderly  "  drawing  out,"  which 
education  elementally  implies,  is  too  generally  re- 
stricted in  its  application  to  the  mental,  or  at  most 
to  the  mental  and  physical,  in  the  child.  In  the 
broadening  educational  horizon  of  the  twentieth 
century  the  end  and  aim  of  education  is  not  to 
make  of  children  animated  knowledge-boxes  and 
peregrinating  encyclopedias,  but  to  draw  out  and 
develop  and  symmetrize  their  three-fold  natures. 
If  there  be  no  moral  training  in  the  public  schools 
and  children  grow  up,  because  of  this  lack  of 
moral  development,  to  lives  of  crime  and  shame, 
the  whole  object  of  education,  so  far  as  they  indi- 
vidually are  concerned  and  so  far  as  society  in 
general  is  concerned,  has  been  defeated.  The 
mentally  and  physically  trained  but  morally  un- 
trained youth,  turned  loose  upon  society,  is  like 
unto  an  infant  given  a  firebrand  amid  the  draperies 
and  combustibles  of  the  nursery  and  left  to  itself 


26  MORAL  TRAINING 

to  ply  the  element  of  destruction  in  its  infantile 
ignorance.  Such  untrained  youths  carry  unwit- 
tingly the  instruments  of  their  own  destruction  and 
of  resultant  danger  to  the  society  of  which  they 
are  designed  to  be  ornaments  and  conservators. 

What  though  multiplied  millions  are  poured  out 
annually  for  the  support  of  public  schools,  if  the 
product  of  those  schools  be  a  juvenile  army  with 
mental  wits  sharpened  but  with  moral  sensibilities 
dormant  or  blunted  —  an  army  without  moral 
banners,  ready  to  be  swept  by  demoralizing  winds 
of  influence  under  the  black  banner  of  vice  and 
crime.  All  the  money  and  effort  expended  upon 
their  training  are  thus  rendered  nugatory.  If 
moral  training  be  neglected  the  dereliction  not 
only  recoils  upon  the  individual  child  thus  robbed 
of  its  birthright  but  it  acts  and  reacts  detrimentally 
and  disastrously  upon  society. 


Public  School  a  Democracy. 

Each  and  every  public  school  in  the  land,  no 
matter  how  humble,  is  a  republic  in  miniature. 
So  strikingly  does  this  idea  appeal  to  educators,  in 
many  city  schools  model  mimic  governments, 
municipal  and  national,  are  conducted  under  the 
supervision  of  the  pupils  themselves.  In  the 
schools  exist,  in  the  main,  the  functions  of  the 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  27 

principal  institutions  of  general  civic  government. 
Here  also  prevail  in  embryo  the  virtues  and  vices 
of  the  larger  sphere  of  the  citizen.  How  funda- 
mentally important  is  it,  therefore,  that  these 
embryonic  citizens  should  have  their  feet  set  upon 
the  king's  highway  of  civic  virtue !  Here  in  this 
republic,  bounded  by  four  walls,  may  be  and 
should  be  instilled  the  virtues  that  will  fit  children 
in  a  large  measure  for  the  responsibilities  of  citi- 
zenship. Here  public  and  private  honesty  and 
honor  may  and  should  be  impressed;  here  the 
noxious  weeds  of  selfishness,  deceit,  craft,  the 
domineering  spirit,  idleness,  talebearing  and  gos- 
sip, hate,  envy,  lying,  may  be  checked  in  their 
growth  in  the  fallow  moral  nature  of  the  child  and 
in  their  stead  may  be  planted  the  antithetic  virtues 
that  will  tend  to  spring  up  and  root  out  the  poi- 
sonous growth  and  bring  forth  abundant  fruit  of 
good  citizenship  in  adult  years.  The  public 
school  teacher  is  chief  magistrate  over  a  sover- 
eignty where  the  highest  moral  good  of  the  minia- 
ture commonwealth  should  be  one  of  the  very 
foremost  objects.  Such  a  teacher,  in  a  way,  is  a 
counterpart  of  Moses,  promulgating  wholesome 
moral  laws,  and  of  Alfred  the  Great  and  all  the 
wise  and  beneficent  rulers  who  have  administered 
laws  for  the  highest  good  of  all. 


28  MORAL  TRAINING 

Inherent  Worth  of  a  Human  Soul. 

One  of  the  primal  claims  in  behalf  of  moral 
training  may  be  based  upon  the  inherent  worth 
of  the  individual  child.  The  weight  of  responsi- 
bility impresses  deeply  every  conscientious  teacher 
when  it  is  considered  that  the  destiny  of  immortal 
souls  in  large  measure  hangs  upon  the  training 
given  and  influence  wielded  in  the  schoolroom. 
"  What  will  a  man  give  in  exchange  for  his  soul?  " 
comes  the  divine  interrogatory  that  has  no  possible 
estimable  answer.  There  is  no  material  consid- 
eration which  can  be  put  in  the  balance  and 
weighed  over  against  one  human  soul,  although 
tenanted,  it  may  be,  in  the  most  humble  and  re- 
pulsive fleshly  edifice.  Expense,  effort,  sacrifice, 
years  of  preparation  on  the  part  of  the  teacher  — 
all  these  are  not  worthy  to  be  compared  with  the 
intrinsic  value  of  the  immortal  part  of  the  meanest 
and  least  promising  child  that  presents  its  lean, 
hungry,  attenuated  but  receptive  nature  to  be  fed 
and  nurtured  in  its  mental,  moral  and  physical 
aspects.  It  is  a  sad  commentary  on  the  public 
school  system  of  the  United  States  that  provision 
was  not  made  long  ago  for  supplying  moral  aliment 
to  the  youth  of  the  land. 

The  incongruity  of  building  up  an  edifice  on  a 
foundation  of  sand,  liable  to  topple  and  fall  and 
not  only  be  destroyed  itself  but  ruin  other  edifices 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  29 

in  its  collapse,  seems  so  palpable  in  the  matter  of 
training  children,  the  marvel  is  that  so  great  a 
mission,  so  vital  a  part  of  the  educational  archi- 
tecture should  not  only  be  indifferently  regarded 
but  wholly  ignored  oftentimes.  What  profits  it 
to  rear  with  infinite  pains  and  through  an  elabor- 
ate and  costly  governmental  enginery,  the  frame- 
work of  young  manhood  and  womanhood,  using 
only  their  mental  and  physical  capabilities  as 
structural  material,  while  that  which  every  con- 
scientious educator  and  every  thoughtful  man  and 
woman  must  recognize  as  the  essential  found- 
ation of  all  good  in  education  —  the  moral  devel- 
opment of  the  individual  —  is  left  out?  What 
result  more  natural  than  that  such  a  structure 
should  topple  and  become  a  menace  as  soon  as  the 
demoralizing  influences  of  life  beat  upon  it  in  the 
inevitable  tempests  which  sweep  every  human 
structure?  How  long  must  it  be  until  the  stone 
of  moral  training  which  these  educational  builders 
have  put  at  nought  shall  become  the  head  of  the 
corner  ? 

As  between  the  educated  criminal  and  the  ig- 
norant lawbreaker  the  former  is  a  far  greater 
menace  to  society.  Not  only  is  the  educated 
criminal  more  capable  of  committing  graver  crimes 
than  his  illiterate  brother  in  crime,  but  society  has 
been  mulcted  of  the  time  and  effort  and  money 
spent  in  his  education  and  is  subject  to  the  shock 


30  MORAL  TRAINING 

and  demoralizing  impress  which  a  conspicuous 
career,  wrecked  in  crime,  gives.  To  what  pur- 
pose is  the  youth  taught  the  elements  of  chemistry, 
in  the  line  of  his  mental  development,  if  infor- 
mation thus  gleaned,  not  guided  and  controlled 
by  a  moral  helm,  is  turned  to  the  criminal  purpose 
of  compounding  an  insidious  poison  to  commit 
murder  without  discovery,  or  to  devising  a  chemi- 
cal solution  that  will  reduce  forgery  to  an  exact 
science? 

The  public  schools  owe  it  to  each  and  every  in- 
dividual child  in  the  land  firmly  to  plant  the  found- 
ations of  elementary  education  on  the  solid  rock 
of  moral  truth.  The  obligation  is  due  primarily 
to  the  child  itself,  whose  eternal  destiny  is  largely 
in  the  keeping  of  the  teacher.  The  debt  is  owing, 
secondarily,  to  society  in  general,  whose  sponsor 
the  teacher  is  in  preparing  the  child  for  useful, 
honorable  life. 

The  foregoing  are  but  a  few  of  the  more  cogent 
reasons  why  there  should  be  moral  training  of  the 
millions  of  youths  of  the  land  who  will  never  ma- 
triculate in  educational  institutions  higher  than  the 
public  schools.  The  need  of  such  training  is 
patent,  pressing;  the  demand  for  it  does  not  rest 
upon  fanatical  zeal  or  sectarian  whim.  It  is  most 
eloquently  attested  by  the  census  tables  of  crime, 
incorrigibility,  pauperism  and  insanity;  every  po- 
lice court  in  every  city,  town  and  village  in  the 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  31 

land  is  a  testimonial  to  the  need;  the  blood  of  the 
victim  of  every  homicide  cries  out  from  the  ground 
in  appeal  for  training  calculated  to  hold  in  leash 
the  fearful  passions  which,  untrained,  plunge 
through  the  gradations  of  crime  to  the  gory 
depths  of  assassination.  Christianity  and  en- 
lightened civilization  would  hail  such  instruction 
as  the  surest  harbinger  of  "on  earth  peace,  good 
will  toward  men." 


II 

SCOPE   AND   METHODS   OF   MORAL   TRAINING 


44^  I  ^RAIN  up  a  child  in  the  way  he  should  go 
A  and  when  he  is  old  he  will  not  depart 
from  it."  The  sacred  writer  not  only  impresses 
the  obligation  to  teach  morality  but  gives  comfort- 
ing assurance  that  the  child  instructed  systemati- 
cally "  in  the  way  he  should  go  "  will  not  depart 
from  his  teaching  "  when  he  is  old."  This  is  at 
once  a  solemn  obligation  and  an  encouraging 
promise;  a  manifest  duty  and  an  assured  reward 
for  the  faithful  performance  thereof. 

It  were  vain  to  argue  that  every  child  well- 
taught  morally  will  keep  strictly  to  the  path  of 
rectitude  throughout  life.  There  are  so  many 
adverse  influences  with  which  moral  natures  must 
combat,  so  many  snares  and  pitfalls  for  the  un- 
wary, so  many  weaknesses  of  heredity  or  tem- 
perament which  beset  the  individual  that  in  many 
cases  even  the  wisest  and  best  of  moral  training  by 
parents  and  teachers  may  not  suffice  to  sustain  the 
child  when  it  shall  have  "  put  away  childish 
things  "  and  gone  forth  in  its  maturer  years  to 
meet  temptations  and  responsibilities.  The  gen- 

32 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  33 

eral  truth  of  the  sacred  adjuration  and  the  reward 
of  its  fulfillment,  literally,  however,  are  attested 
on  every  hand  and  have  borne  the  test  of  the  ages. 
/"  So  universally  is  childhood  recognized  as  the 
ductile,  impressionable,  habit- forming  period  of 
life  —  the  age  when  most  lasting  impressions  are 
most  readily  made  —  this  phase  of  the  subject  of 
child-training  may  be  passed  over  with  but  a  word. 
That  the  aged  remember  vividly  the  scenes  and 
incidents  of  their  extreme  youth,  things  in  them- 
selves oftentimes  the  most  trivial  in  character,  but 
emphasizes  the  indelibility  of  impressions  made 
upon  the  fresh,  retentive  nature  of  the  child. 

At  birth  the  child's  moral  nature  is  as  a  blank 
tablet,  an  unwritten  page  susceptible  to  the  slight- 
est and  most  delicate  exterior  influence.  Here 
and  there  upon  that  page  may  be  the  blotches  of 
hereditary  moral  taint  which  later  in  life  will  blur 
the  most  perfect  moral  influence  which  may  come 
into  contact  therewith.  As  the  child  comes  into 
being  it  may  be  said  to  be  non-moral  —  that  is, 
negatively,  without  any  fixed  moral  impressions  or 
impulses.  But  from  the  hour  of  birth  begins  that 
rapid  growth  and  expansion  and  absorption  under 
exterior  influence  which  in  a  few  short  years  is 
destined  to  make  of  the  youth  an  intelligent  moral 
being. 

To  be  effective,  moral  training  must  be  deep 
and  sincere.  The  youth  superficially  trained  in 


34  MORAL  TRAINING 

morals  may  go  out  into  society  with  his  moral  re- 
pulsiveness  concealed  under  a  polished  exterior, 
but  the  result  is  only  a  thin  veneer  over  a  rotten 
or  decaying  framework.  The  poultice  of  polish 
that  heals  the  surface  leaves  the  festering  sore 
within,  liable  at  any  time  to  break  out  into  moral 
recrudescence. 

Webster  defines  "  morals  "  thus: 

"  The  doctrine  or  practice  of  the  duties  of  life; 
manner  of  living  as  regards  right  and  wrong;  con- 
duct; behavior." 

44  Moral  "  as  an  adjective  is  defined: 

44  Pertaining  to  those  intentions  and  actions  of 
which  right  and  wrong,  virtue  and  vice,  are  predi- 
cated, or  the  rules  by  which  such  intentions  and 
actions  ought  to  be  directed;  relating  to  the  prac- 
tice, manners  or  conduct  of  men  as  social  beings  in 
relation  to  each  other,  as  respects  right  and  wrong 
so  far  as  they  are  properly  subject  to  rules." 

The  definition,  analyzed,  discloses  a  twofold 
duty  binding  upon  the  individual  —  right  living 
and  thinking  on  the  part  of  the  individual  as  his 
moral  duty  to  his  better  self;  right  thinking  and 
acting  toward  mankind  in  general  as  his  moral 
social  duty.  From  this  it  is  seen  that  proper 
moral  teaching  of  children  comprehends  incul- 
cating the  rules  by  which  the  child  is  to  develop 
itself  so  as  best  to  subserve  its  own  happiness, 
health  and  well-being,  this  development  to  be 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  35 

symmetrical,  so  as  to  equip  the  child  for  the 
larger  duties  and  responsibilities  of  life,  involving 
its  relations  toward  mankind,  as  a  social  being. 

Morality  in  the  child  properly  has  a  distinct 
intrinsic  and  extrinsic  existence  and  manifestation. 
Children  primarily  need  to  be  taught  to  respect 
themselves,  to  keep  their  own  minds  and  bodies 
and  moral  impulses  pure;  this  idea  thoroughly 
rooted,  the  larger  duty  toward  society  will  impress 
itself  in  the  orderly  development  of  the  moral 
nature.  The  child's  first  lesson  is  its  moral  duty 
to  itself  and  this  lesson  should  be  deeply  implanted. 
Then  in  the  evolution  of  training  as  to  moral  duty 
will  come  in  natural  sequence  the  comprehensive 
grasp  of  duty  toward  parents,  brothers  and  sis- 
ters, schoolmates  and  companions,  and  the  Cre- 
ator. For,  avoiding  sectarianism,  every  child 
reverently  should  be  led  to  "  Remember  now  thy 
Creator  in  the  days  of  thy  youth  while  the  evil 
days  come  not." 

Virile  Moral  Teaching. 

Moral  instruction  in  the  public  schools,  to  be 
effective,  must  be  vitalized,  earnest,  compre- 
hensible. Children  should  not  be  fed  upon  over- 
done, underdone,  or  illy-prepared  and  indigestible 
moral  food;  the  resultant  dyspepsia  will  be  a  veri- 
table moral  plague  and  the  last  estate  of  children 


36  MORAL  TRAINING 

so  taught  will  be  worse  than  the  first.  Stereo- 
typed, parrot-like,  hackneyed,  dogmatic  or  homi- 
letic  teaching  is  a  menace  to  morals.  Like  every 
other  phase  of  teaching  it  is  impossible  to  lay 
down  empirical  rules  as  to  methods  of  training  in 
morals;  but,  in  general,  the  cravings  and  suscepti- 
bilities of  the  moral  nature  of  the  child  should  be 
gauged  and  instruction  should  be  given  in  such 
manner  and  to  such  extent  as  will  insure  agreeable 
receptivity  on  the  part  of  the  child,  and  thus  pro- 
mote the  digestive  process  which  will  turn  the 
carefully  prepared  and  properly  administered  food 
into  aliment  to  nourish  and  develop  the  moral 
being. 

"  Men  must  be  taught  as  if  you  taught  them 
not  "  is  a  truism  which  applies  with  particular 
force  to  the  realm  of  childhood.  It  will  never 
do  to  reduce  moral  teaching  to  a  text-book  basis.  | 
Whenever  moral  lessons  are  set  down  alongside 
arithmetic,  to  be  learned  by  rote,  a  revulsion  in 
child  nature  will  be  superinduced  fatal  to  every 
beneficent  aim  of  moral  training.  The  giving  of  i 
moral  nourishment  must  in  a  measure  be  so  sea- 
soned and  sugar-coated  as  to  render  it  not  only 
palatable  but  inviting,  and  the  child-nature, 
if  possible,  must  be  so  prepared  for  the  reception 
of  the  more  vital  moral  truths  that  the  partaking 
thereof  will  come  as  much  a  matter  of  course  and 
with  the  same  sharpened  appetite  as  if  it  were  a 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  37 

feast  of  dainties  tempting  an  empty  stomach. 
Only  as  this  method  is  approximated  will  be  in- 
duced that  healthful  assimilation  which  consum- 
mates moral  training.  If  the  stomach  be  gorged 
with  an  unseasonable  mass  of  indigestibles,  the 
child's  physical  body  not  only  fails  to  assimilate, 
but  the  outraged  stomach  revolts  and  makes  itself 
painfully  felt.  Equally  true  is  it  that  if  the  child 
is  crammed  full  of  indigestible  moral  truths,  illy- 
prepared  and  ignorantly  or  indifferently  adminis- 
tered by  the  teacher,  the  moral  nature  not  only 
will  not  assimilate  the  gorge  but  there  will  ensue 
a  painful  revulsion  which  will  bode  ill  for  subse- 
quent efforts  to  develop  the  moral  nature  of  the 
child. 

Historians  relate  how  Lycurgus  withdrew  from 
his  people  to  Crete  and  there  formed  an  intimacy 
with  Thales,  a  poet  of  great  abilities,  whom  he 
engaged  so  far  in  his  designs  as  to  persuade  him 
to  go  and  settle  at  Sparta  and,  by  poems  suited  to 
the  purpose,  endeavor  to  prepare  the  minds  of 
the  people  for  receiving  those  alterations  in  gov- 
ernment and  manners  which  Lycurgus  hoped  he 
might,  one  day,  have  it  in  his  power  to  propose  to 
their  consideration.  Accordingly,  when  Lycurgus 
returned  to  Sparta  he  had  already,  by  insensible 
degrees,  prepared  the  minds  of  the  people;  for, 
while  listening  to  the  poems  of  Thales  they  had 
been  imbibing  gradually  sentiments  favorable  to 


38  MORAL  TRAINING 

the  plans  which  Lycurgus  had  in  contemplation. 
By  proceeding  in  a  gentle  and  cautious  manner 
Lycurgus  was  thus  enabled  to  bring  about  distinct 
reforms  that  otherwise  would  have  been  impos- 
sible without  violence  and  revolution. 

The  lesson  in  this  for  the  teacher  who  essays  to 
train  in  morals  is  obvious.  Children  cannot  be 
driven  back  into  the  moral  Eden.  They  must  be 
led  by  ways  so  inviting  and  agreeable  that  flowers 
will  conceal  the  ruggedness  of  the  path.  This 
idea,  however,  should  not  be  abused.  Moral 
sturdiness  must  be  inculcated.  Teaching  must  not 
be  made  so  attractive  as  to  become  false,  flaccid 
and  insipid.  The  proper  proportions  of  "  blood 
and  iron  "  must  be  in  the  moral  compound  upon 
which  the  child  is  fed.  Discrimination,  tact  and 
keen  insight  into  child  nature  will  commend  to 
the  teacher  the  happy  median  method  of  making 
innately  rugged  moral  truths  acceptable  and  as- 
similable to  the  child. 

Elemental  Moral   Training:, 

The  homeliest  phase  of  the  teacher's  work  has 
its  possibilities  of  moral  instruction.  The  sim- 
plest and  most  elemental  incidents  and  circum- 
stances of  the  schoolroom,  of  child  life,  lend 
themselves  admirably  to  the  inculcation  of  moral 
truth.  No  attempt  is  made  here  to  lay  down  ab- 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  39 

solute  rules  or  to  outline  in  any  degree  of  com- 
pleteness the  sources  from  which  moral  instruc- 
tion may  be  garnered.  But  the  humblest  school 
room  has  as  rich  possibilities  for  moral  gleanings 
as  the  field  of  Boaz  presented  to  Ruth  in  the  way 
of  ripened  grain.  From  the  most  common  actions 
of  the  pupils  habits  may  be  developed  by  the 
teacher,  through  her  deft  training,  which  in  them- 
selves will  become  a  fruitful  source  of  moral 
growth.  Orderliness,  neatness,  respect  for  elders, 
thoughtfulness,  unselfishness,  honesty,  truthful- 
ness, may  be  taught  every  day  and  every  hour  in 
the  routine  work  of  the  school  in  the  relations  of 
pupils  to  teacher  and  to  each  other.  The  im- 
portance of  small  actions  in  the  formation  of 
habits,  the  necessity  of  keeping  impulses  pure,  the 
absolutism  of  habit  —  all  these  and  their  multi- 
form suggestions  and  applications  the  teacher  may 
emphasize  by  methods  which  occasion  will  dictate 
as  best. 

It  is  a  sublime  thought  that  should  give  en- 
thusiasm and  ardor  to  every  conscientious  teacher 
that  in  the  homely  routine  of  the  school  may  be 
developed  the  most  momentous  moral  truths  in 
the  universe.  Here  aptly  applies  Shakespeare's 
beautiful  thought  on  "  the  uses  of  adversity  "  :  — 


"  Which,  like  the  toad,  ugly  and  venomous, 
Wears  yet  a  precious  jewel  in  his  head." 


40  MORAL  TRAINING 

Amid  bare  walls  and  floors,  ugly  desks  and  un- 
adorned environings  of  thousands  of  schools  lie 
the  precious  jewels  of  moral  truth  within  reach 
of  the  poorest  and  most  unpromising  child  if  the 
teacher  but  be  the  skilled  lapidary  to  polish  these 
gems  of  truth  and  present  them  to  the  receptive 
minds  and  hearts  of  the  children. 

While,  as  heretofore  observed,  sectarianism 
never  should  enter  the  public  schools  in  any  guise, 
yet  accountability  to  God  should  be  a  part  of  the 
teaching  in  morals.  The  advantages  of  upright 
living  likewise  should  be  emphasized.  In  the 
teacher's  own  way  and  by  suitable  illustrations, 
the  truth  should  be  made  manifest  that  "  honesty 
is  the  best  policy  ";  that  "  righteousness  exalteth 
a  nation  but  sin  is  a  reproach  to  any  people  " — 
and  here  the  application  should  be  individualized; 
that  "  a  good  name  is  rather  to  be  chosen  than 
great  riches  " ;  that  an  untroubled  conscience  is 
a  better  asset  than  a  plethoric  purse  filled  with  ill- 
gotten  gains.  As  sordidity  and  sensual  artifici- 
ality are  common  besetments  of  present-day 
Americans,  these  demoralizing  tendencies  should 
be  especially  combatted  in  the  child  nature. 

Teach  Personal  Responsibility. 

The  teacher  may  lay  the  foundation  of  a  liberal 
moral  education  by  impressing  upon  each  pupil 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  41 

personal  responsibility  in  the  successful  conduct 
of  the  school.  Every  teacher  comes  to  realize 
the  value  of  the  personal  equation  of  pupils  in 
governing  the  school?  Nothing  so  appeals  to  the 
pride  and  better  impulses  of  boys  and  girls  as  to 
be  put  upon  their  good  behavior  —  to  be  made  to 
feel  that  the  success  or  failure  of  an  adult  upon 
whom  they  look  with  respect  lies  largely  with  them 
individually.  To  the  degree  that  the  teacher 
stimulates  this  rivalry  among  pupils  as  to  who  shall 
do  most  and  best  toward  making  the  school  work 
in  all  its  phases  a  success,  to  that  extent  not  only 
will  the  school  become  practically  self-governing, 
but  the  pupils  unconsciously  will  have  acquired 
some  of  the  most  inestimable  civic  and  social  vir- 
tues —  orderliness,  respect  for  constituted  author- 
ity, helpfulness,  magnanimity,  self-control  and 
sense  of  personal  responsibility.  Judicious  use  of 
the  means  thus  put  within  the  reach  of  every 
teacher  not  only  will  prove  a  wholesome  course  in 
morals,  but  a  valuable  assistance  in  the  way  of 
"  governing"  the  school,  which  is  the  bane  of 
many  teachers'  lives.  Discipline  largely  may  be 
placed  upon  a  basis  of  pride  and  honor  by  the 
teacher  so  that  the  pupils  will  come  to  govern 
themselves  in  a  large  measure  and  the  school  thus 
will  become  virtually  autonomous.  It  is  needless 
to  dilate  upon  the  beneficial  effects  of  such  con- 
ditions in  the  school  upon  both  teacher  and  pupils. 


42  MORAL  TRAINING 

With  the  evolution  of  moral  training  schools  can 
be  placed  more  and  more  upon  an  honor  basis,  so 
far  as  discipline  is  concerned,  to  the  marked  ad- 
vantage of  all  schools. 

Practical  Moral  Teaching. 

The  fault  of  much  of  present-day  teaching  lies 
in  its  vagueness,  abstruseness  and  attenuated  gen- 
erality. If  moral  training  is  to  be  of  lasting  bene- 
fit it  must  be  made  distinctively  practical.  It  is  no 
field  for  the  mere  theorist  or  the  visionaire  to 
enter.  The  homely  saying  that  "  hell  is  paved 
with  good  intentions  "  might  well  be  supplemented 
with  the  assertion  that  much  of  the  infernal  as- 
phaltum  is  also  furnished  from  ill-considered, 
purposeless  moral  cramming.  To  a  certain  ex- 
tent the  Squeers  method  must  prevail  in  effective 
moral  training.  When  the  child  has  learned  to 
spell  and  define  moral  duty  there  must  be  coupled 
with  this  instruction  the  impulse  to  perform  moral 
duties  as  they  present  themselves. 

A  form  of  teaching  morals  open  to  vitiating 
abuse  is  that  which  holds  out  a  material,  tangible 
reward  for  every  right  action  the  child  performs. 
This  is  liable  to  become  disastrous  to  all  moral 
ends.  The  teacher  should  endeavor  to  teach 
goodness  for  goodness'  sake  and  so  far  as  possible 
wean  the  child  away  from  expectation  of  immedi- 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  43 

ate,  material  reward  for  every  right  action  and 
impulse.  Many  teachers  are  in  danger  of  build- 
ing upon  quicksand  in  this  respect  and  only  dis- 
cover their  error  after  the  child  has  awakened  to 
the  fact  that  it  has  been  flim-flammed  in  its  moral 
teaching  by  being  promised  recompense  of  a  na- 
ture which  does  not  materialize.  Your  twentieth 
century  youth  is  by  nature  an  intense  materialist 
and  generally  is  acute  beyond  his  years  in  deter- 
mining the  sincerity  of  the  teacher  and  the  truth 
or  falsity  of  teachings  as  affecting  material  re- 
wards or  portended  punishments. 

Teach  Moral  Courage. 

In  no  aspect  is  moral  training  more  sadly 
needed  in  this  country  than  in  inspiring  moral 
courage.  This  virtue  generally  and  conspicu- 
ously either  is  lacking  or  feebly  developed. 
Through  false  or  indifferent  training,  or  from  lack 
of  training,  masses  of  boys  and  girls  grow  up  to 
the  years  of  manhood  and  womanhood  spineless 
so  far  as  moral  courage  is  concerned.  These,  be- 
cause of  their  moral  cowardice,  so  deteriorate  and 
are  so  "  driven  about  by  every  wind  of  doctrine," 
simply  because  it  is  popular,  as  to  be  a  positive 
peril  to  orderly  society.  Moral  stability  has  been 
belittled  or  ignored  or  promulgated  in  such  a  milk- 
and-water  manner  by  teachers  as  to  leave  no  im- 


44  MORAL  TRAINING 

pression  on  the  natures  of  multitudes  of  youth. 
On  the  other  hand,  physical  daring  and  prowess 
have  been  glorified  inordinately  in  the  schools,  in 
the  homes  and  in  books  and  newspapers  until  we 
are  in  danger  of  becoming  a  nation  of  bullies  and 
braggarts. 

It  is  known  even  to  the  wayfaring  man  that 
many  a  man  who  has  the  courage  to  face  frowning 
batteries  and  the  most  fearful  physical  danger  un- 
daunted, will  shrink  and  cower  before  a  sneer. 
Strong,  persistent,  wholesome  training  of  youth 
in  the  rudiments  of  moral  manliness  and  courage 
is  a  nation-wide  necessity.  To  be  independent,  to 
stand  firmly  for  the  right  if  need  be  in  the  face 
of  sneers,  insults,  misrepresentations;  to  live  so 
as  to  be  above  just  cause  for  reproach  but  if  re- 
proach come  to  have  the  moral  sinew  and  fiber  so 
well  developed  they  will  stand  firm  and  unshaken 
amid  the  tumult  of  vituperation  —  this  is  the  kind 
of  training  every  child  should  receive.  The 
pages  of  history  and  biography  are  rich  with  shin- 
ing examples  of  the  highest  type  of  moral  courage 
and  afford  an  exhaustless  fountain  upon  which  the 
teacher  may  draw  for  the  edification  and  interest 
of  the  child.  The  discriminating  teacher,  without 
straining  the  point,  may  show  the  child  that  the 
type  of  courage  that  impelled  Henry  Clay  to  ex- 
claim "  I  would  rather  be  right  than  be  Presi- 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  45 

dent,"  and  to  act  accordingly,  is  extremely  rare 
and  as  admirable  as  rare. 

There  are  biographies  of  eminent  Americans 
which  are  as  fascinating  to  youth  as  romance  and 
which  in  themselves  teach  grand  moral  lessons. 
For  instance,  there  may  be  put  before  the  pupils 
the  physical  courage  and  moral  cowardice  of 
Benedict  Arnold,  forming  a  repellant  antithesis  to 
the  group  of  Revolutionary  heroes  which  includes 
such  physically  and  morally  courageous  men  as 
George  Washington  and  Nathan  Hale. 

A  conspicuous  fault  of  many  school  histories 
and  biographical  works  is  the  tendency  to  glorify 
the  warrior  and  wars  out  of  all  normal  and  just 
proportion.  The  fame  of  Alexander  and  Caesar 
and  Napoleon  thrills  the  heart  of  youth,  but  the 
moral  effect  of  hero  worship  in  idealizing  such 
characters  of  history  is  very  questionable.  Youth 
is  impulsively  extreme  and  does  not  weigh  motives 
and  discriminate  between  the  good  and  the  evil  of 
the  great.  The  halo  of  glorification  that  indis- 
criminately is  thrown  around  the  genius  of  the 
battlefield  by  some  perfervid  historians  is  not  cal- 
culated to  foster  the  spirit  of  peace  and  order  and 
justice  in  the  natures  of  the  young. 

While  giving  due  meed  of  praise  and  rank  to 
military  genius,  the  teaching  given  should  empha- 
size the  beneficent  achievements  of  inventors,  ex- 


46  MORAL  TRAINING 

plorers,  statesmen,  authors  and  philanthropists 
who  have  contributed  largely  toward  making  the 
world  better.  Franklin  toying  with  the  lightning 
through  his  kite;  Watt  gathering  the  fundamental 
idea  of  a  momentous  invention  from  watching  the 
steam  tilt  the  lid  of  a  tea  kettle;  Newton  grasping 
the  idea  of  gravitation  from  seeing  an  apple  fall, 
sublime  suggestion  which  the  poet  has  set  to 
rhyme : 

"  That  very  law  that  molds  a  tear 
And  bids  it  trickle  from  its  source, 
That  law  preserves  the  earth  a  sphere 
And  guides  the  planets  in  their  course  " — 

All  these  fascinate  youth  like  the  weavings  of  the 
romancer.  The  achievements  of  men  who  have 
struggled  and  wrought  to  make  the  world  better 
should  be  exalted,  not  fanatically  and  dispropor- 
tionately, but  judiciously,  soberly.  Children  are 
quick  to  grasp  and  sympathize  with  tales  of  hard- 
ships and  struggles  against  adversity;  the  seeds  of 
morality  may  be  sown  with  success  in  the  fertile 
soil  of  receptive,  interested  minds  where  concrete 
examples  from  history,  faithfully  portrayed,  are 
held  up  to  their  mental  gaze. 

It  is  high  time  that  children  should  be  made  to 
believe  and  realize  that  "  peace  hath  her  victories 
no  less  renowned  than  war";  that  heroes  have 
lived  in  all  ages  who  never  trod  the  crimson  path 
of  martial  glory;  that  the  world  is  much  more  in 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD          47 

need  of  "  men,  high-minded  men  "  who  will  be 
heroic  in  peace,  who  have  the  moral  courage  to 
meet  and  conquer  adversity  and  to  do  the  right  at 
all  hazards,  than  it  needs  "  mighty  men  of  re- 
nown "  to  lead  its  armies  and  command  its  navies. 

Sources  of  Moral  Instruction. 

Sources  of  moral  instruction  are  embarrassingly 
numerous.  Newspapers,  books,  magazines,  text- 
books, nature,  the  daily  routine  of  school  work, 
social  relations  of  pupils  with  each  other  —  these 
are  but  a  few  of  the  fields  teeming  with  possi- 
bilities. 

Graphic  lessons  of  a  moral  nature  may  be  im- 
pressed from  momentous  events  of  current  history 
as  recorded  in  the  better  class  of  newspapers. 
The  San  Francisco  disaster,  for  instance,  had 
manifold  teachings,  such  as  the  innate  charity  and 
magnanimity  of  the  mass  of  humanity  when 
aroused  by  suffering  and  destitution;  the  splendid 
courage  of  whole  communities  in  the  face  of  al- 
most overwhelming  disaster,  and  like  patent 
lessons. 

Moral  teaching  is  best  subserved  by  dwelling 
upon  the  beauties  and  advantages  of  pursuing  a 
goodly  career  rather  than  emphasizing  the  re- 
pulsiveness  and  disastrous  consequences  of  evil 
living.  In  this  connection  arises  a  duty  all  teachers 


48  MORAL  TRAINING 

owe  the  children  under  their  guidance  —  to  shield 
them  against  the  sensational  newspaper.  This  is 
coming  to  be  one  of  the  recognized  demoralizing 
agencies  of  the  country.  Mr.  Arthur  J.  Pillsbury, 
Secretary  of  the  State  Board  of  Examiners  of 
California,  made  a  tour  of  investigation  of  some 
eighty  reformatory  and  eleemosynary  institutions 
of  the  East  and  middle  West  and,  reporting  upon 
the  chief  causes  which  conspire  to  fill  such  insti- 
tutions, he  has  this  to  say  of  the  harmful  influence 
of  "  yellow  journalism  n  : 

"  It  is  perfectly  clear  to  sociologists  that  the 
increase  of  criminality,  the  world  over,  and  espe- 
cially in  this  country,  is  largely  due  to  the  power 
of  suggestion  of  the  '  yellow  '  press.  Sensational 
papers  are  mainly  taken  by  persons  most  likely  to 
be  influenced  by  the  power  of  suggestion,  and  the 
reading  of  graphic  reports  of  murders,  suicides, 
robberies,  domestic  scandals,  etc.,  day  after  day, 
year  after  year,  cannot  fail  of  producing  untoward 
results  in  minds  of  that  character.  It  has  been 
observed  that  atrocities  of  every  kind,  blazoned 
in  the  columns  of  such  papers,  are  imitated  shortly 
after,  incident  by  incident.  Time  was  when  the 
dime  novel  was  charged  with  many  heinous  of- 
fenses against  social  well-being,  but  how  much 
greater  the  evil  now  that  daily  novels  of  as  worth- 
less character  are  hawked  about  the  streets  at  one 
cent  per  copy  1  The  '  yellow  '  papers  not  only 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  49 

use  a  deal  of  fiction  in  their  daily  grist,  but  they 
tell  whatever  truth  they  do  tell  in  the  language  of 
fiction  so  that  it  tastes  like  fiction  in  the  mouths 
of  their  readers  and  has  the  same  influence  upon 
their  overwrought  nervous  systems." 

Schools  Civic  Barracks. 

The  nation,  ever  mindful  of  the  advice  of 
Washington  —  in  time  of  peace  to  prepare  for 
war  —  maintains  at  the  highest  possible  state  of 
efficiency  an  elaborate  military  and  naval  estab- 
lishment. Not  one  whit  less  important  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  honor  and  glory  of  the  nation 
is  the  vast  civic  establishment  represented  in  the 
public  schools  of  the  country.  Every  school 
house  is  a  civic  barracks.  It  is  of  the  utmost  im- 
portance that  from  these  barracks  should  be 
turned  out  armies  of  youth  trained  in  moral  duties 
and  capabilities,  to  fight  the  nation's  battles  for 
honesty,  uprightness,  clean  living,  right  thinking 
and  just,  helpful  governing.  Ill  will  fare  the  land 
if  the  means  are  neglected  for  the  training  of  its 
youth  to  become  moral,  industrious,  law-abiding 
citizens.  As  the  public  school  is  the  chief  recruit- 
ing station  of  citizenship,  the  vital  necessity  of 
maintaining  the  high  moral  standard  of  the  re- 
cruits thus  turned  out  is  apparent. 


Ill 

QUALIFICATIONS    FOR  TEACHING  MORALS 

LIKE  the  poet,  the  good  teacher  is  born,  not 
made;  and  however  blessed  with  tact  and  tal- 
ent for  teaching,  no  one  is  so  abundantly  endowed 
as  not  to  be  better  equipped  for  imparting  in- 
struction by  themselves  undergoing  a  thorough 
disciplinary  course  in  training.  Notwithstanding 
the  persistent  crusade  for  trained  teachers  for  the 
public  schools  there  may  be  found  to-day  all  too 
many,  usurping  the  place  of  real  teachers,  who 
have  had  no  adequate  training  for  their  work  and 
who  cannot,  in  the  nature  of  things,  be  equipped 
for  its  delicate  responsibilities.  While  mental  in- 
struction of  children  calls  for  the  most  careful 
preparation  on  the  part  of  the  teacher,  what  must 
be  said  of  the  preparation  demanded  of  him  or 
her  who  would  undertake  to  "  train  up  a  child  in 
the  way  he  should  go  "  morally? 

For  the  work  of  molding  symmetrical  moral 
vessels  out  of  the  raw  and  dissimilar  clay  of  the 
schoolroom  the  teacher  needs  not  only  the  vital 
teachings  of  the  best  psychological  writers  for 

50 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  51 

guidance,  but  there  are  many  essential  qualifi- 
cations that  must  be  acquired  outside  the  well- 
beaten  psychological  paths  blazed  by  books. 
Systematic  thought,  observation  of  child-nature 
first  hand,  intense  earnestness  and  devotion  to  the 
work  in  hand,  diagnosis  of  each  individual  child 
and  application  of  remedies  to  meet  the  peculiar 
moral  need  of  each  one  —  herein  lies  the  broad 
and  yet  specific  province  of  the  successful  teacher 
of  morals. 

As  the  moral  physician  of  the  juvenile  com- 
munity the  teacher  must  maintain  an  ample 
apothecary  shop,  with  reserve  stores  of  special 
knowledge,  skill  and  dexterity.  The  teacher 
must  determine,  with  the  quickness  and  accuracy 
of  the  experienced  physician,  what  the  ailment  is 
and  what  treatment  to  apply.  This  child's  moral 
sensibilities  are  blunted  by  heredity  —  here  the 
alterative,  the  tonic;  there  a  youth  has  suffered  a 
wound  of  pride  from  a  thoughtless  playmate 
which,  if  not  healed  promptly,  will  become  an 
angry  sore  of  hate  —  there  the  teacher's  moral 
emollient  is  demanded;  yonder  a  boy  physically 
robust  and  ebullient  with  animal  spirits,  as  full  of 
mischief  as  a  June  rosebush  of  bees  —  here  the 
mild  sedative  is  demanded  to  curb  to  moderation 
the  mischievousness  which,  if  not  held  in  bounds, 
will  lead  the  boy  into  some  current  of  flagitious 
moral  transgression;  and  so  on  through  the  whole 


52  MORAL  TRAINING 

moral  pharmacopoeia,  remedies  may  be  found  of 
known  virtue  in  moral  therapeutics. 

Teacher's  Character  and  Personality. 

The  public  school  teacher  should  have  a  clear 
passport  as  to  moral  character  —  a  character  in 
which  are  conspicuously  developed  the  cardinal 
virtues  which  are  to  be  instilled  into  the  pupils. 
Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  defines  history  as 
"  philosophy  teaching  by  example."  This 
graphic  definition,  personified,  may  not  inaptly 
be  applied  to  the  teacher  —  a  moral  philosopher 
teaching  by  example.  The  influence  of  the  char- 
acter and  personality  of  the  teacher  upon  the  pupil 
is  beyond  calculation  and  ramifies  amazingly. 
Therefore  is  it  a  prime  necessity  that  the  teacher 
should  be  self-poised,  optimistic,  patient,  sympa- 
thetic, industrious,  neat,  orderly  —  in  a  word,  not 
only  the  moral  exemplar  but  the  moral  inspiration 
of  the  whole  school.  There  is  an  indefinable  mag- 
netic moral  influence  that  teachers  exert  upon  chil- 
dren. A  clean,  wholesome,  cheerful  mind  and 
heart  sending  out  magnetic  waves  from  the  teach- 
er's desk  beget  a  like  state  among  the  pupils.  This 
influence  of  teachers,  manifested  in  similitude  of 
actions  and  impulses  on  the  part  of  pupils,  is 
strikingly  apparent,  especially  in  remote  districts 
where  life  is  simple  and  children  do  not  have 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  53 

counteracting  and  distracting  influences.  It  be- 
hooves every  teacher  to  make  use  of  these 
obviously  potential  possibilities  of  moral  stew- 
ardship. 

Every  teacher  should  be  thoroughly  honest  and 
conscientious  in  every  phase  of  school  work  and- 
not  shirk  or  imperfectly  or  indifferently  perform 
duties.  Children  are  quick  to  note  such  defection 
and  its  demoralizing  influence  is  marked. 

Many  teachers  are  themselves  the  sorry  prod- 
ucts of  the  lack  of  moral  training  in  the  public 
schools.  They,  by  hook  or  crook,  cram  enough 
jumbled  information  into  their  brains  to  be  able 
to  "  pass  examination "  and  then,  without  any 
natural  aptitude  or  acquired  qualifications  for 
teaching,  they  sally  forth  to  play  havoc  with  the 
training  of  children.  Themselves  untrained, 
knowing  little  or  nothing  of  child  nature  or  the 
psychological  order  of  its  development,  they  cheat 
the  pupils  out  of  their  priceless  birthright  and 
obtain  their  salaries  under  false  pretenses.  They 
are  not  teachers,  only  u  sounding  brass  and 
tinkling  cymbals,"  masqueraders  wearing  the 
livery  of  a  calling  with  sacred  responsibilities. 

All  the  states  are  giving  more  and  more  atten- 
tion to  the  training  of  teachers  and  stricter  re- 
quirements along  this  line  are  being  adopted.  As 
moral  training  becomes  a  more  distinct  part  of 
public  school  work,,  teachers  of  necessity  will  have 


54  MORAL  TRAINING 

to  be  fitted  carefully  and  thoroughly  for  this  deli- 
cate function. 

Beacon  lights  of  a  new  and  better  era  in  public 
school  teaching  already  are  shining  afar.  False 
teachers  are  being  displaced.  Teaching  is  being 
made  a  profession,  is  being  elevated  from  its  long- 
abused  position  of  "  stepping  stone  to  something 
better."  Enlightened  public  sentiment  is  de- 
manding trained,  thoroughly  qualified  men  and 
women  as  teachers.  The  days  of  the  superficial, 
untrained  and  unfit  information-monger  are  num- 
bered. Another  generation  will  witness  the  cul- 
mination of  a  notable  evolution  in  this  respect. 


IV 

BENEFITS   OF   MORAL   TRAINING 

GENERAL   REMARKS 

IN  the  primal  dawn  of  creation,  as  the  Al- 
iiighty  breathed  into  existence  the  varied  forms 
of  plant  and  animal  life  and  pronounced  the 
eternal  fiat  fixing  the  functions  of  each  animated 
kingdom,  He  is  represented  by  the  sacred  writer 
as  looking  upon  the  product  of  His  omnipotent 
will  through  the  eyes  of  omniscience  and  putting 
the  stamp  of  His  approval  upon  all  the  orderly 
systems  thus  inaugurated  upon  the  earth.  "  And 
God  saw  everything  that  He  had  made  and,  be- 
hold, it  was  very  good." 

As  there  are  three  distinct  kingdoms  in  the  ma- 
terial world,  each  with  a  separate  function  in  the 
universal  plan,  and  yet  all  closely  interrelated  and 
interdependent,  so  man  was  created  'a  trinity,  his 
nature  composed  of  three  distinct  yet  closely  in- 
terrelated kingdoms.  Philosophy  and  science,  as 
well  as  the  Bible,  teach  that  nothing  was  created 
without  a  definite  purpose.  No  part  of  the  three- 
fold nature  of  man,  therefore,  properly  can  be 
regarded  as  a  superfluity.  Neither  can  immunity 

55 


56  MORAL  TRAINING 

from  development  be  claimed  for  any  part  of 
man's  nature  on  the  ground  that  it  has  no  func- 
tion. The  mental,  the  moral  and  the  physical 
kingdoms  in  man  each  has  its  peculiar  capabilities, 
its  distinct  functions,  and  yet  so  closely  related,  so 
sympathetic  are  they  that  none  may  suffer  or  be 
neglected  without  all  being  affected.  In  the  or- 
derly and  symmetrical  development  of  the  child- 
man  the  moral  nature  cannot  be  neglected  or 
ignored  without  the  mental  and  physical  being 
made  to  suffer.  Thus  it  is  seen  that  the  child  of 
vicious  habits  drains  its  own  physical  being  and 
sows  the  seeds  of  physical  and  mental  decay. 
There  is  no  more  fearful  physical  truth  in  the 
Scriptures  than  that  voicing  of  the  inexorable 
operations  of  a  natural  law  of  the  physical  world, 
"  Whatsoever  a  man  soweth  that  shall  he  also 
reap;  he  that  soweth  to  the  flesh  shall  of  the  flesh 
reap  corruption." 

Nor  does  the  mental  nature  escape  unscathed 
amid  vicious  indulgence.  The  mind  most  readily 
responds  to  the  blighting  influence  of  vitiated 
morals.  Its  faculties,  besotted  and  blunted,  be- 
come deformed  and  the  deformities  turn  awry  the 
best  efforts  toward  mental  training  on  the  part  of 
parents  and  teachers. 

To  cast  out,  so  far  as  possible,  these  tares  of 
moral  corruption  which  children  have  sown  or 
inherited;  so  to  cultivate  the  moral  nature  of 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  57 

youth  not  yet  tainted  by  immorality  that  the  seeds 
of  corruption  may  not  find  lodgment  and  take 
root  —  this  is  the  province  of  moral  training.  As 
the  great  mass  of  children  of  this  country  receive 
practically  all  their  instruction  in  public  schools,  it 
is  there  moral  training  must  be  intrenched  for  the 
moral  salvation  of  the  future.  The  benefits  that 
would  flow  from  moral  training  of  public  school 
children  are  so  many  and  diverse  as  to  defy  com- 
plete summary. 

Let  us  contemplate  the  child  comprehensively 
as  it  sets  out  upon  the  uncertain  pilgrimage  of  life, 
not  of  itself  knowing  the  safe  way,  ignorant  of 
the  laws  that  govern  each  stage  of  its  existence, 
not  comprehending  its  duty  to  itself  or  its  fellow- 
beings.  If  haply  the  public  schools  supply  a 
moral  guide,  this  mentor  of  the  child  takes  the 
unwitting  nature  and  step  by  step  leads  it  on,  all 
the  while  writing  upon  the  tablet  of  its  impres- 
sionable nature  the  rules  for  safe  moral  conduct 
along  the  whole  pathway  from  childhood  to  the 
goal  of  age.  Gradually  the  way  unfolds  and  is 
mapped  out  in  detail  in  the  child's  mind  and 
heart,  so  that  it  needs  but  refer  thereto  at  any 
parting  of  the  ways  or  at  any  doubtful  point  on 
the  journey  to  determine  the  true  path  of  up- 
rightness. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  journey  the  little  pil- 
grim is  taught  introspectively  —  instructed  in  its 


58  MORAL  TRAINING 

own  powers  and  weaknesses,  how  to  conserve  and 
develop  the  one  and  how  to  overcome  the  other ; 
how  to  travel  so  as  to  get  the  most  good  and  the 
minimum  of  ill  for  itself  out  of  life.  Then,  as 
the  eager  pilgrim  waxes  in  strength  and  under- 
standing, its  moral  horizon  is  widened  and  its 
duties  toward  fellow-pilgrims  is  made  cleajr.  It 
is  taught  that  giving  moral  aid  to  those  in  need 
does  not  impoverish  the  giver  nor  does  withhold- 
ing enrich,  but  on  the  contrary  that  giving  has  its 
reflex  action  of  blessing  while  withholding  has  its 
baneful,  dwarfing  influence  upon  him  who  with- 
holds. Gradually  the  whole  range  of  elementary 
civic  and  social  obligations  is  traversed.  The  as- 
piring embryonic  pilgrim  is  impressed  that  life's 
road  is  not  a  solitary  thoroughfare,  that  its  prob- 
lems and  pleasures  are  not  for  self  alone,  that  its 
duties  and  responsibilities  embrace  society  and  the 
state,  the  present  and  the  future. 

The  weaknesses  of  the  young  traveler's  moral 
nature  are  bolstered  against  the  inevitable  pit- 
falls and  quicksands  of  temptation  which  will 
beset  the  path.  The  lesson  is  impressed  that, 
should  the  pilgrim  scrupulously  regard  the  in- 
structions given  and  safely  cross  these  dangerous 
places  it  not  only  will  have  added  strength  unto 
itself  but  its  influence  will  have  helped  other  weak 
natures  to  withstand  the  same  dangers.  As  it  ad- 
vances on  the  moral  way  it  is  instructed  from  the 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  59 

human  wrecks  that  strew  its  path  —  the  idle,  the 
vicious,  who  have  wearied  of  well-doing  and  have 
fallen  by  the  wayside,  or  are  struggling  hope- 
lessly to  keep  in  the  right  way.  The  child's  moral 
vision  is  sharpened.  It  sees  other  pilgrims  like 
itself  go  cheerily  on  their  way  bearing  not  only 
their  own  burdens  but  stopping  now  and  again  to 
assist  some  weaker  pilgrim.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  sees  the  dread  consequences  and  tendencies  of 
vice.  Boys  and  girls,  men  and  women,  them- 
selves throwing  away  their  opportunities  to  walk 
in  the  safe  and  manifest  road  of  moral  duty  and 
taking  to  the  crooked  and  unsafe  by-roads,  bor- 
dered by  precipices  and  strewn  by  thorns,  instead 
of  being  impelled  by  their  own  fearful  mistakes 
to  warn  others,  set  about  to  snare  their  fellows 
who  are  keeping  to  the  right  way;  and  even 
though  they  do  not  actively  try  to  accomplish  the 
downfall  of  others,  yet  their  influence  unbidden 
goes  forth  to  its  fell  work.  Some  weak  pilgrim 
who  hitherto  has  kept  in  the  straight  path,  looks 
aside  at  some  acquaintance  or  friend  in  the  by- 
ways and,  either  overcome  with  discouragement 
with  the  sight  of  others  failing,  or  lured  by  the 
siren  voice  of  vice,  he  yields  and  falls  and  evil 
influence  has  scored  its  victim. 

And  thus  is  our  young  impulsive  pilgrim  given 
a  comprehensive,  kaleidoscopic  view  of  the  path- 
way it  must  traverse  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave. 


60  MORAL  TRAINING 

Its  eyes  behold  the  good  and  the  evil  —  the  one 
it  is  taught  to  choose  at  all  times  and  in  all  circum- 
stances, the  other  consistently  to  eschew;  and  with 
the  knapsack  of  its  mind  and  its  heart  well-stored 
with  moral  viands,  with  its  physical  frame  trained 
for  the  stern  realities  of  the  journey  and  with  its 
mind  developed  to  its  keenest  capacity,  this  ideal 
pilgrim  is  a  splendid  specimen  of  symmetrical 
youth  "  trained  up  in  the  way  he  should  go  " — 
the  ideal  product  of  the  public  schools  of  the  fu- 
ture. Surely  such  a  consummation  will  not  be 
dismissed  as  Utopian. 

Temperance  teaching  in  public  schools  in  many 
states  of  the  union  has  demonstrated  its  efficacy 
and  the  results  attained  argue  eloquently  in  behalf 
of  systematic  general  moral  training. 

The  tendency  of  the  age  toward  mad  material- 
ism makes  the  demand  for  moral  training  of  chil- 
dren immediate  and  urgent.  Let  the  public 
schools  replenish  the  moral  blood  of  society  with 
the  rich  life-current  of  active,  progressive,  ag- 
gressive moral  citizenship  and  soon  an  age  of  gold 
will  be  transmuted  into  a  golden  age;  an  era  of 
"  plain  living  and  high  thinking  "  will  dawn;  citi- 
zenship will  cease  to  be  a  cloak  for  whited  sepul- 
chers  and  will  rise  to  its  full  stature;  the  land  will 
flow  with  the  milk  and  honey  of  "  good  will 
toward  men,"  exemplified  in  the  marts  of  trade 
and  amid  the  strenuosities  of  commerce  and  in- 


OF  THE  SCHOOL  CHILD  61 

dustry,  as  well  as  in  the  sequestered  vales  of  life; 
men  and  women  will  lift  themselves  to  loftier 
planes  of  living;  the  normal,  well-poised,  manly, 
ideal  American  will  be  in  flower  and  individual, 
community,  state  and  nation  will  go  forward, 
new-fledged,  to  hasten  the  fullest  fruition  of  the 
most  beneficent  type  of  civilization  the  world  has 
seen.  Great  is  to  be  the  America  of  the  future 
and  the  public  school,  fostering  public  morals,  is 
to  be  its  prophet  I 


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